Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Someone posted this on the old forum, but it wasn't transferred. Does anyone have the playoff site schedule that the NFL used from 1970-74?

I take it you didn't buy Ivan Urena's outstanding book "Pro Football Schedules"; I highly recommend it. It may sound like it is not an interesting book but it is fascinating; my personal favorite part is how Ivan determined they came up with the rotating interconference opponents for each team for the 1970-77 era. I'll let Ivan explain this playoff seeding in detail himself since he is the resident expert, but I'll give a quick overview using the 1970 NFC.

The 1970-74 NFL playoff seeding is hard to follow because you can't seed them 1,2,3 ahead of time like we do now. In that era, the teams were essentially seeded twice, once at the Divisional Game level and then re-seeded at the Championship Game level. This is how in the 1970 NFC playoffs, Minnesota hosted San Francisco (SF won) and Dallas hosted Detroit (Dallas won), because the Central Division winner was seeded number one and Eastern Division winner was seeded number two. In the NFC Championship game, you would expect Dallas to host the game because they hosted the Divisional game and San Francisco was a road team in the Divisional round but San Francisco instead hosted the game because the divisions were re-seeded for the Championship round and the Western division winner (if they were still alive) was seeded highest. If Minnesota had defeated San Francisco, Dallas would have hosted Minnesota in the NFC Championship game because the Eastern Division winner (if they were still alive) was seeded higher than the Central Division winner to host the Championship game.

I know it doesn't make sense, but if you buy Ivan's book and look at his tables and how the seedings rotate from year to year, it makes perfect sense.

What I never understood is why the NFL decided to set up the playoffs this way. And why it took them 5 years to realize its much more logical just to give the better team home field advantage.

But maybe that is all explained in Ivan's book which I've been meaning to get for awhile.

ChrisBabcock wrote:What I never understood is why the NFL decided to set up the playoffs this way. And why it took them 5 years to realize its much more logical just to give the better team home field advantage.

But maybe that is all explained in Ivan's book which I've been meaning to get for awhile.

I think they did it this way because in the past they rotated the site the same way.

The event that surely changed this line of thinking was the 1972 AFC Championship game. When you had 14-0 Miami traveling to 11-3 Pittsburgh to play the AFC Championship, it just didn't seem right that an undefeated team should have to go on the road for a playoff game. You started to see sports columns and letters to the editor asking why this happened, and the NFL had no explanation other than this was the system they came up with and it wasn't based on the team with the best record getting home field advantage. With Don Shula on the Competition Committee, he was able to get this corrected because it made perfect sense to reward the team with the best record.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

ChrisBabcock wrote:What I never understood is why the NFL decided to set up the playoffs this way. And why it took them 5 years to realize its much more logical just to give the better team home field advantage.

But maybe that is all explained in Ivan's book which I've been meaning to get for awhile.

I think they did it this way because in the past they rotated the site the same way.

The event that surely changed this line of thinking was the 1972 AFC Championship game. When you had 14-0 Miami traveling to 11-3 Pittsburgh to play the AFC Championship, it just didn't seem right that an undefeated team should have to go on the road for a playoff game. You started to see sports columns and letters to the editor asking why this happened, and the NFL had no explanation other than this was the system they came up with and it wasn't based on the team with the best record getting home field advantage. With Don Shula on the Competition Committee, he was able to get this corrected because it made perfect sense to reward the team with the best record.

The 1972 NFC playoffs also helped give a huge boost to the movement to change the blackout rule after Washington fans (which included Nixon and other politicians) either had to go elsewhere or weren't able to watch either home playoff game.

The 1972 NFC playoffs also helped give a huge boost to the movement to change the blackout rule after Washington fans (which included Nixon and other politicians) either had to go elsewhere or weren't able to watch either home playoff game.

That rule was dumb, anyway. Didn't they use a 75-mile radius? That's too far.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

ChrisBabcock wrote:What I never understood is why the NFL decided to set up the playoffs this way. And why it took them 5 years to realize its much more logical just to give the better team home field advantage.

But maybe that is all explained in Ivan's book which I've been meaning to get for awhile.

I think they did it this way because in the past they rotated the site the same way.

The event that surely changed this line of thinking was the 1972 AFC Championship game. When you had 14-0 Miami traveling to 11-3 Pittsburgh to play the AFC Championship, it just didn't seem right that an undefeated team should have to go on the road for a playoff game. You started to see sports columns and letters to the editor asking why this happened, and the NFL had no explanation other than this was the system they came up with and it wasn't based on the team with the best record getting home field advantage. With Don Shula on the Competition Committee, he was able to get this corrected because it made perfect sense to reward the team with the best record.

Yeah except it was unseasonably warm in Pittsburgh on December 31st 1972.

This is regular season, and I don't know if it's in the book, but I was inspired to figure out something that had been bothering me for a long time.

I could never figure out why the Packers played the Bengals two years in a row, 1976 and 1977. Meanwhile the Packers had played the Browns in 1972 but not since then.

With interconference play in 1970, every team in each conference played 3 interconference games, with one exception. The Eastern Division in both conferences had 5 teams, so they played 8 division games, 3 interconference games, and 3 conference games with the 8 teams from the other two divisions. The other two divisions typically played two games with teams from the Eastern division. 3x5=15, and 2x8=16, so the math doesn't work. Every year two of the teams from the four team divisions in each conference would match up to get rid of the extra game.

The interconference games were on a rotation so that by 1974 every team had played every other team. Then they started over again. In 1974 the Packers played the Bills, their last interconference matchup. They also played the Chargers and Colts, teams they had played in 1970. 1975 brought the Steelers, from 1970, and the Broncos and Dolphins, from 1971.

When expansion came in 1976, the expansion teams played every other team in their conference once. To make room on the schedule, one of the interconference games was cancelled for each team. So in 1976 the Packers played the Raiders, from 1972, and the Bengals, from 1971. The third matchup was to be with the Browns, from 1972, but it was cancelled in favor of playing the Seahawks. The Browns matchup was not pushed back, just cancelled. The NFL moved on.

In 1977 the Packers played the Oilers, the last matchup from 1972. Also the Chiefs, from 1973. They also played the Bengals. Since the Buccaneer game cancelled one of the interconference games, what I finally figured out is the 1977 Packer Bengal game was the extra interconference game that was always necessary.

The interconference game was never a part of the team rotation. It was just an extra game. So the game in 1976 between the Packers and Bengals meant nothing.

For the record, the extra game each year was:
1970 - Broncos & 49ers
1971 - Broncos & Lions
1972 - Broncos & Falcons
1973 - Broncos & Bears
1974 - Broncos & Rams
1975 - Browns & Vikings
1976 - Raiders & Saints
1977 - Bengals & Packers

The 1976 Raiders Saints game was the cancelled interconference game for both teams and was not played. It would have made sense to do the same for 1977 Bengals Packers, I don't know why the NFL didn't. But that wouldn't have meant a Packers Browns game, that was gone with the wind. It would have been Packers Jets or Packers Patriots. The Packers would have lost to all of those teams in 1977, so it's just interesting, but I never understood what was going on until now!

Rupert Patrick wrote:I take it you didn't buy Ivan Urena's outstanding book "Pro Football Schedules"; I highly recommend it. It may sound like it is not an interesting book but it is fascinating; my personal favorite part is how Ivan determined they came up with the rotating interconference opponents for each team for the 1970-77 era. I'll let Ivan explain this playoff seeding in detail himself since he is the resident expert, but I'll give a quick overview using the 1970 NFC.

The 1970-74 NFL playoff seeding is hard to follow because you can't seed them 1,2,3 ahead of time like we do now. In that era, the teams were essentially seeded twice, once at the Divisional Game level and then re-seeded at the Championship Game level. This is how in the 1970 NFC playoffs, Minnesota hosted San Francisco (SF won) and Dallas hosted Detroit (Dallas won), because the Central Division winner was seeded number one and Eastern Division winner was seeded number two. In the NFC Championship game, you would expect Dallas to host the game because they hosted the Divisional game and San Francisco was a road team in the Divisional round but San Francisco instead hosted the game because the divisions were re-seeded for the Championship round and the Western division winner (if they were still alive) was seeded highest. If Minnesota had defeated San Francisco, Dallas would have hosted Minnesota in the NFC Championship game because the Eastern Division winner (if they were still alive) was seeded higher than the Central Division winner to host the Championship game.

I know it doesn't make sense, but if you buy Ivan's book and look at his tables and how the seedings rotate from year to year, it makes perfect sense.

Using that example, for many years in the Divisional playoffs teams from the same division did not meet. In 1970 Detroit (the wild card team) would have played in Minnesota if they were in different divisions.

The one thing that made sense in the 1970-74 system is that you knew where the championship game was going to be. It was always at the winner of the 2-3 seed game. I guess that was in compensation for what happened in the first round.

So in 1970 the Central had the number one seed, East #2, West #3. But the wild card couldn't play the winner of its division, so East moved up to #1 and Central down to #2. So Dallas hosted Detroit, and Minnesota hosted San Francisco. Dallas being #1, they were going to go on the road regardless of who won the other game.

In 1972 is another interesting case. Washington had the best record and East was #1. West was #2 and Central was #3. But the wild card was from the east, so West went to #1 and East went to #2. So San Fran got the wild card (Dallas.) Since San Fran moved up to number 1 they would have travelled to Washington if they had won, the same way Dallas did. But if the wild card rule didn't exist, and Washington beat Dallas in the first round, they would have gone to the winner of the San Fran/Green Bay game.